Audiodays Recording Seminar

In this video, Fab records a trio in live conditions. The main challenge here is to anticipate and manage the bleed from all the instruments into all the microphones, get the best possible sound and capture the live energy and emotion of the band.

This tutorial will show you how to make fast decision, make compromises and how to get a good sound with what you have, along with basic recording concepts of guitar, vocals, drums and cello instruments.

The microphones used are Josephson microphones. This session involves a lot of swapping microphones around as Fab discovers their respective best uses for each instrument. Preamps used: Dave Hill Europa 1, Tube-Tech MP1A, Neve 1073, Realios A9031. All recorded in Pro Tools.

The song is called "The ship and the storm" by Will Knox. Will plays the guitar and sings, Simon plays the Cello and Thomas Pirot the drums.

The musicians' feelings are here, the quality of the instruments shines through and the mood is perfect for the song.

00:00:08Welcome to Audiodays!
My name is Fab, I make records,
and I'm here to share a few ideas
about good ways to make records
in an environment...

00:00:21that is less than ideal.

00:00:23Everything is done in real-time.
We only had two hours to set it all up,
so it may be a bit
experimental at times.

00:00:29This event is brought to you by 3 companies:
Avid
Puremix...
Don't laugh at my accent!
Avid, Puremix and Audio Addict
Our engineer today is Ben Lindell
who just arrived from New York
especially for the occasion.

00:00:48He doesn't speak French.

00:00:57So we're going to end up with a wonderful
mixture of "Frenglish" -- great!
The band that's playing
tonight is Will Knox,
from England,
with whom I work in New York.

00:01:09On the cello, we have Simon
who's also English.

00:01:14And on the drums,
we have Thomas, who is French.

00:01:17So we have: one who
doesn't speak French,
two who speak a bit of French,
and one who speaks French...
and English. Should be fine.

00:01:25So, the first thing I'm gonna do
is to describe the system
that I'm going use for the recording.

00:01:31The idea of this seminar
is to demystify the recording phase
and find out how to work with tools
that are available to us
but not necessarily
in a traditional studio environment.

00:01:44How many of you have a traditional studio
with a booth and a control room?
One
two, three...

00:01:54That settles it.

00:01:55How many of us are here?
Eighty... thousand?
It means that most people
make records without
the luxury of having
a large console, a window
separating the musicians and the engineer
It's a different way of doing things...
a rather complicated one.

00:02:12There are some things to deal with,
but also a state of mind to adopt.

00:02:17And I'm going to try and share
some new ideas, maybe.

00:02:21So, the system.

00:02:23We have a Pro Tools|HDX as a base.

00:02:26We use a Pro Tools 10
which is the latest version.

00:02:30Pro Tools|HDX is the new card.

00:02:32A card that does I/Os
and also has real-time DSPs.

00:02:38We are using a 16-channel
HD I/O Avid interface,
We're going to use that for inputs and
outputs, as our converter.

00:02:46So, a Pro Tools 10,
one HDX and the HD I/O.

00:02:52For the monitoring section...
What's "monitor" in French again?
"Écoute". Thank you sir.

00:02:58we use a Dangerous Music Source,
which controls the volume,
for both the monitors
and the headphones.

00:03:06It's a really useful little box
if you want to listen to
what's going on in Pro Tools and maybe
what's going on in iTunes, to compare both.
We'll cover that later on.

00:03:15We have a set of Focal Solo6 monitors.

00:03:18Why did I pick these?
Because I know them.

00:03:21In an experimental
situation like this one,
it's important to have
at least one point of reference,
something you know well.
From the moment Ben presses Play...

00:03:31I've listened to those monitors
so much, in fact,
that the room fades away a little.

00:03:37All rooms cheat us, obviously.

00:03:41There is no such thing as a perfect room,
especially in the setting we're in here.

00:03:44But as you work and monitor
with a set of speakers,
you create a kind of relationship
with your monitor,
so that you can listen to it virtually anywhere
and you know more or less what's going on.

00:03:55The key word here is "more or less".

00:03:57Meaning you can also get it completely wrong.
Let's see, it's quite funny.

00:04:01So we have the Pro Tools 10,
the HDX, the HD I/O,
the Dangerous Source,
And the Focal monitors
to work with.

00:04:09Regarding preamps,
we have a whole array:
we're going to use some TubeTech,
the new Europa preamp by Dave Hill,
a Realios amp,
and a Neve 1073.

00:04:27The preamps are plugged in right behind
the interface.

00:04:30There's no compression, we simply
work with preamps, and by moving the mics.

00:04:34I'm trying to get the best possible
sound, in terms of clarity.

00:04:37And I work it out afterwards.

00:04:41As they say: "fix it in the mix".

00:04:44Of course, the idea is not to have to
fix it in the mix.

00:04:51It's our job, while we
still have a choice,
to try and fix issues straight off.

00:04:56As for mics, I've got some Josephsons.

00:05:01There's a 715, a 716,
a 700.

00:05:06Some 42s and some 22s.

00:05:08So the interesting thing here is that,
until today,
I mean until an hour and a half ago,
I had never heard Josephson mics.

00:05:16I hadn't heard most of
these preamps either.

00:05:18I knew the Europa, the MP1A.

00:05:20I didn't know the Realios,
The 1073...

00:05:23I don't know this one.

00:05:24I know how it sounds,
but I didn't know this particular one.

00:05:27And so,
it's a similar situation you get
when you go and work
with someone or in a
studio you don't know,
and you have some gear,
and musicians,
instruments, and you're
like: "ok well... where do we start?"
Ah! Very good question...

00:05:42Thanks for asking.

00:05:45So here is how we did it.

00:05:46While you were eating your canapés
and drinking that wonderful punch,
I played riddles.

00:05:52That's something I always do.

00:05:57There are many engineers, or producers,
who always use the same system.

00:06:01"For my bass drum,
I use a D 112,
with a 1073 preamp,
with a LA-2A
and a something Pultec...

00:06:09I remove 3dB at 500Hz,
I go straight into that preamp...

00:06:13and there's my bass drum."
Truth is, these days:
1) It's impossible to do that,
because not everybody has
this kind of gear at home.

00:06:19I mean I don't have it... Do you?
2) You ruin your chances to ever get better
since you always use the same stuff.

00:06:253) It's very likely that a D 112
on this bass drum,
is the worst possible choice.

00:06:31Consequently,
what I use for that is...
my gut feeling.

00:06:36Meaning that I screw up
on a regular basis.

00:06:39So the first thing we're gonna do
is ask Mr. Will Knox,
to come and sit here.

00:06:52How did I pick the mics for Will?
Let me tell you.
I'm not too sure how I did it.

00:06:59I asked the manufacturer, I said:
"What kind of mic is this one?"
He said: "That's a CK-12 capsule".

00:07:05I know from experience,
because I've done it once or twice,
that I love the CK-12 capsule for vocals
I find that it works.
So I thought, "well...

00:07:13since you've got to start somewhere,
and you don't know these mics,
let's start with that."
The first thing I'm gonna do,
is set up the vocals mic
on Will
Where do I put it?
I don't know, maybe near the mouth
Sounds about right.

00:07:26There it is...
The science behind mic setups.

00:07:30The problem, of course,
is that here, it's going to be a
nightmare in terms of mic bleeds.

00:07:35So, we're gonna try it first,
before Thomas starts to play,
let's see if we can have
a sound we like.

00:07:40I have a Josephson 716.

00:07:43Will has this incredible talent,
he's able to play guitar
and sing at the same time,
and make it sound good all the same.

00:07:56How did I pick the guitar mic?
With the same foolproof
scientific method
I used to pick the voice mic, namely...

00:08:04randomly.

00:08:07Done. So we're gonna try
and see what happens.

00:08:09Randomly, yes, but actually,
I know that, for instance,
if you have a small-diaphragm
condenser mic,
the mic bleed usually
sounds pretty good.

00:08:24While with a large-diaphragm
condenser mic,
the sound of the mic bleed is less good.

00:08:28If I appreciate the distance
and the way these two
instruments project sound,
that is, the guitar projects loudly
and the voice projects
a little less loudly,
I know that I'll place
the vocals mic closer
and the guitar mic a little further away
to get a bit of room.

00:08:41And I also know that
if this mic is a little further away,
there will be more bleed.

00:08:46If there is more bleed,
I'd rather it was nicer,
more in phase with
the rest of the instruments,
so that -- tomorrow during the mix --
I wouldn't have to do my drums sound
and have my guitar track
ruin the drums sound,
because it was out of phase or
the bleed wasn't nice. Do we agree?
The idea behind this kind of exercise
is that actually, everything has to bleed
well into everything else.

00:09:12When I turn the mic up
for each instrument
the bleed of the other instruments
that is not targeted by the mic
should also be rather... good.

00:09:21Let's not be too ambitious...
But at least,
not unpleasant.

00:09:25It's not an easy thing to do.
Let's see if we can do it.

00:09:27The first thing to do,
is to put them in more
or less the right position...

00:09:32For guitars,
after many an experiment...
Especially with this guitar, that I know very well
it's a great guitar for picking,
a Collins.

00:09:42It's a great one,
I recorded it many times
because Will and I work together a lot.

00:09:46It has a great sound...

00:09:48for picking.

00:09:50By picking I mean finger picking...

00:09:52For strumming it's not that great...

00:09:55So we're gonna try to meet halfway.

00:09:58There we go.

00:10:04So here I'm gonna try to use some
positive psychology
to convince Will
to watch the distance to his mics.

00:10:15In a setup like this one
where everything is close,
if we move the mic by this much,
it can offset the phase and ruin it for everybody.

00:10:25Behind those two mics,
there are two Europa preamps by Dave Hill,
two preamps that just came out,
very modern, very clean.

00:10:33The reason why I picked them is that,
obviously, it's his record.

00:10:38So I want his voice to be as clear and manageable as can be.

00:10:42So I don't want to add
too much coloration from the start,
I'm gonna try to keep it as neutral as possible
and as clean as possible.

00:10:49I've already used this preamp at home
and it's super clean.

00:10:54I thought it would be a good idea,
so that I don't get any coloration in the low end.
It's not gonna mess up the rest.

00:11:00So we're gonna start
with a short gain test.

00:11:01To be sure to avoid saturation.

00:11:38I'm adjusting the mic here because as you can see
he naturally tends to
-- as soon as he gets into his music --
his neck stretched over this way,
he turned a bit over that way,
he went down a bit, slumped a bit.

00:11:49So I'm adjusting the mic straight away,
because it's now or never.

00:11:53Why now?
Because if you start doing several takes
and you adjust in between them,
and you want to do some editing afterwards
you're dead.

00:11:59So you really have to make
decisions straight away.

00:13:05Not bad, right?
And you don't hear much of the guitar.

00:13:10We were expecting worse, right?
You have to trust it!
Be positive!
I just asked him to adjust
the gain of the vocal,
so we can have both faders at 0,
and with that, a good balance.

00:13:29Why do I bother to do that?
I do it because...

00:13:34Well, we're going to mix it tomorrow,
But imagine it takes place
in 6 months' time.

00:13:38Or that I'm not the one doing it,
that I send it out to a good guy:
Chris Lord-Alge.

00:13:43He opens the session.

00:13:45If you don't hear the vocal,
because it's -15 dB below,
the first impression is awful.

00:13:50When I am sent songs to mix,
and I receive loads of them,
in general, I open the session,
I don't even know where the vocal is.

00:14:04And on top of that, you can't hear it,
you don't get the song,
and you spend 5 hours sorting through it.
An absolute nightmare.

00:14:11So, out of respect, for everyone
who's working on the project,
I always try to make it so that
with the faders at 0,
we have a normal balance.

00:14:22It always annoys me,
when I listen to a session for the first
time, that it sounds good
and I'm getting to the chorus,
and I get decapitated by the electric guitars.

00:14:31It's a nightmare. So, because
I don't like it when it happens to me,
I try not to do it to others.

00:14:42So, Ben adjusted his gains.

00:15:19It's absolutely normal to have
shivers down your spine when Will is singing.

00:15:22It's normal. Get used to it,
it's gonna be like that all night.

00:15:40I'm going to put it a bit closer.

00:15:42Just because that's how it's done.

00:15:49We'll take it as a success.

00:15:51And we're going to carry
on a bit further.

00:16:10Simon is feeling good.
This is a rough translation.

00:16:14It's considered a good custom
to ask musicians
to play their instruments a bit for you
before you place the mic.

00:16:21First of all because it gives them the impression
that you know what you're doing.

00:16:25But it also allows you to listen and figure out
where the sound is coming from
And it's also a good custom to ask
musicians to play something
that's part of the actual song you're
going to record.

00:16:36Quite often, drummers,
not you of course,
but other drummers,
when we're going
to play a song like this...

00:16:44you tell them:
"ok let's do the drum sound" They go...

00:16:48Nope...

00:17:07It's a great instrument.

00:17:09So there's no issue here.

00:17:11We're gonna put it... here.

00:17:15Let's adjust it a bit...

00:17:21Let's record it.

00:17:22What's the preamp?
It's a Neve 1073,
With a Josephson 715.

00:17:45Can we hear it again?
That's not what I heard.

00:18:02Not great...
Ok, let's try something else.

00:18:05We're gonna move it a bit further,
to see if we can get more "air".

00:19:21I thought,
when we went down to the basement
of this great studio,
I found this humongous
Tama bass drum with two...

00:19:30two heads,
I thought that would be good,
it's gonna go boom!
I like things that go boom.

00:19:36Can you go boom for me?
I thought, well,
So I picked a mic.

00:19:42I want to be able to isolate the boom,
so I can get a super boom.

00:19:46and so I picked a small one, a C42,
because it's a cardioid,
which is gonna allow me to put
the bass drum forward
without ruining the rest
of the instruments.

00:19:54So let's do that!
I also have two small 22s.

00:19:58These ones, they're very pretty,
they look like lollipops.

00:20:04Again, I'm using my instinct to position
them... Since I know the part...

00:20:08Can you play it please?
Great!
It's really something ambient,
a bit like Tom Waits.

00:20:23And what I'm interested in here,
is the boom,
some detail on the snare drum
and to isolate the cymbal a little
to use it to create some kind of energy, when he uses it.

00:20:37So there are many schools of thought...

00:20:41"For overheads,
they have to be exactly 37.5 in apart,
equidistant from the snare,
two mics with absolutely perfect...

00:20:51Yeah, sure...

00:20:52But... not necessarily!
In all the records we listen to,
I try to listen to as much music as I can.

00:21:01I was listening to Al Green yesterday,
which has one of my favorite drum sounds.

00:21:07That's ONE mic.

00:21:10And, the snare drum
sounds like it's over 3 feet long
that's how thick it sounds
and how big the boom is.

00:21:15And they did it with one mic!
There's ONE mic,
and they placed it on the snare: boom.

00:21:19Then they got heaps more gear,
because they earned money,
and they put TWO mics on the drum kit.

00:21:24One on the snare, and one on the bass drum.

00:21:26So, all those super strict rules...

00:21:31I never really believed in them.

00:21:33And by the way, most of the records
made according to those rules,
I don't like them very much.
Because I don't find them...

00:21:38very interesting to listen to.

00:21:43Will is going to sing over here,
and Simon's going to play over there.

00:21:46So if I put the mics here,
I'm gonna end up with lots of
Will in the drum track,
And I don't really want to deal
with that tomorrow.

00:21:56So I'm gonna try to find a spot
where I manage to have
a good balance of everything...
with a bit of stereo as well,
because you have to keep the future in mind.

00:22:07You have to invest in the future.

00:22:09The future for me is that, tomorrow,
I'm gonna have to mix everything
which has been recorded like this.

00:22:14Let's think about instrumentation.

00:22:17We have Will singing.

00:22:19There's a strong chance
I'm gonna put him in the middle.

00:22:22We have Will, playing guitar.
I'll most likely put him in the middle too.

00:22:27Meaning that, for now, I have a mono
record. Sounds a bit retro.

00:22:31So, where am I gonna get my stereo info from?
You gotta think about it beforehand.

00:22:34So I'm gonna be able to put
a bit of reverb... Maybe... We'll see.

00:22:38But I also need to put
some stuff on the sides.

00:22:41So I thought that maybe,
if I did a bit of stereo,
-- a bit on the sides --
that would help me tomorrow,
when I'm all alone with my speakers,
thinking what on earth
am I gonna put left and right?
I might put the cello a bit...
a bit around the sides,
but I can't do like the Beatles either,
put it all the way to the left,
it's a bit Mickey Mouse.
I have to be careful with my stereo.

00:23:03When I place my mics, I often think
about the final image of the mix.

00:23:06I close my eyes and think...

00:23:09guitar and voice will clearly be in the middle,
no point in doing it otherwise.

00:23:14As for the rest, it's all up for grabs.
So let's hear it.

00:23:18On the bass drum, we have the Realios,
and on the overheads,
-- the two mics at the top here --
there's a pair of TubeTechs.

00:23:25The Realios is a transformer,
a cascade transformer,
And TubeTech is a series of
transformer, tube, transformer.

00:24:36I think it's time to check the phase
relationshipbetween the two overheads
and the bass drum mic.

00:24:42Ben is gonna do that with a plug-in.
As the plug-ins are delay-compensated,
he can have a plug-in running
as he records, in real-time.

00:24:48and he could flip the phase.

00:24:57So here, we have a choice.
Either, we apply a plug-in onto it,
and we listen to it via the plug-in, in real-time.
Or, we go to the root of the issue,
that is, that we flip the
phase of the bass drum.

00:25:13So we chose not to use the plug-in,
and we flipped the phase,
sorry I mean we reversed the polarity.
We reversed the polarity at the source...

00:25:21It's very important,
-- extremely important --
to check the polarity
and the phase as well.

00:25:28It's not always a problem.
It can be good like that as well.

00:25:31But you have to watch out for
these kinds of things, especially with drums.

00:25:33Because in order to fix it afterwards,
once you have 1,2,3,4,5,6,7... mics,
it's out of control.
So you have to be very careful that
distances between mics and instruments,
between mics, between singers,
and the cello player...

00:25:46are manageable.

00:25:48Because once you start
moving something... it's a mess.

00:25:52"Mess" being a technical term, obviously.

00:25:55Let's try again.

00:26:12Thank you. Once more.

00:26:17That's good.

00:26:28I like that.
Sounds nice, right? Interesting.

00:26:33I like those mics,
I never heard them before.

00:26:36I like that.

00:26:38I like that.

00:26:39That, not so much.

00:26:41So what we're gonna do now,
is that we're gonna ask everyone
to play together
and see what happens when everything bleeds into everything else.

00:26:53'Cause that's where the fun really is.

00:27:08I'm asking them to do the third verse,
in order not to wear them out
and not to waste time.

00:27:13Which is something you should
always do when recording:
watch out for your
musicians' energy levels.

00:27:21But if we were in an actual session,
it takes a while to manage all those mics,
to flip the phase and so on.

00:27:27There are lots of musicians who are not used to
doing the take three times
because you have to flip the phase of
the bass drum. They don't care.

00:27:34But it has to be done now,
because fixing it in the mix is a nightmare.

00:27:37So I communicate a lot
with the musicians,
it's just as important
as placing the mics.

00:27:42Communicate with the musicians and
explain to them why you're wasting their time!
So I'm always very
straightforward about that.

00:27:50I tell them it's gonna take a while to get going,
but then it's gonna be great.

00:29:25Isn't it just a great song?
That's where the fun begins.

00:29:52Not Bad.

00:30:05The interesting bit here is that
we're switching to strumming.

00:30:28It doesn't sound great at all.

00:30:31So, the mic is great for picking,
very sweet.

00:30:34But not so great for strumming!
What do we do?
I wonder... let's think about it.

00:31:05It's nice, but there's quite a few pops.

00:31:08That's because he eats the microphone.

00:31:10But if he doesn't, I get
more drums than vocals.

00:31:12So I'm gonna have to deal with it,
there's no way out.

00:31:26I had asked him to think about his
distance to the mic
and he forgot in the end,
because he was into the song.

00:31:31But we're going to remind
him before each take
that it would be nice if he could
keep us in his heart
and not sing full blast into the mic,
this close to the capsule. Thank you sir!
I'd like to hear the bleed of the
other instruments into the drums,
to see if it's gonna be a mess or not.
That technical term again.

00:32:09That's fine.

00:32:12I'll have less reverb on the guitar.

00:32:15We can hear the cello a bit.

00:32:17Not that bad!
I'll survive.

00:32:38Well, that one is crap.

00:32:42So, ehm. Yeah.

00:32:47So let's do a straight swap.
And so...

00:32:51if my theory proves me right tonight,
the drums bleeding should be
less irritating
in this one. Let's try it!
That's when Ben
starts getting a headache,
because I'm taking the drums' mic
and putting it on the cello.

00:33:12But Ben is much stronger than that.

00:33:15He doesn't care, nothing can stop him.

00:33:19So, let's try this.

00:33:21Let's see if it works.
Because that one was really bad, right?
Goes to show that sometimes,
intuition doesn't work.

00:33:32Let's see how t
his experiment plays out...

00:33:39There's an important feature in
Pro Tools for tracking,
that is, recording musicians live.

00:33:46As far as I'm concerned,
I'd rather work in Pro Tools,
for the following reason:
That's what we just did.

00:33:59That's what we did before.

00:34:00The playlist system is actually
a system of different layers.

00:34:04Instead of thinking like this,
It thinks like so...

00:34:07That is, the oldest are at the back,
and the newest at the front.

00:34:12It's really incredible
how it changes your life,
in terms of practicability and
organization in your sessions.

00:34:21When you're tracking vocal, for instance,
I can get up to 60 takes.

00:34:24Depends on the singer... not for Will...

00:34:26but a normal singer,
who can't sing,
it can take up to 60 takes.

00:34:32It's a nightmare to deal with.

00:34:34The great thing about Pro Tools,
is that regarding takes,
when you have 60 takes,
you press the button,
it lines up all your tracks like that,
it's well organized, easy to modify,
and easy to create a new playlist.

00:43:08He doesn't record very loud.
Don't you find that it's a bit light?
Actually, no,
that's where you should be for tracking.

00:43:14For several reasons:
1) The louder you record,
the bigger the chances you'll
overload the input stage.

00:43:22And there's no "Undo" button for that,
so it's better to leave
plenty room for that.

00:43:292) 99.999999% of the sessions
I receive for mixing
are recorded so loud,
everything is recorded so loud,
that I spend most of my mixing time
fixing those problems.

00:43:45I start off by lowering everything by 6 or 12 dB,
just so I can listen to the song,
without hurting my eyes.

00:43:51So, if you record everything very loud,
the first thing that happens
is that you kill all transients
and if you do that,
there's no music anymore.

00:43:59Because music is all about transients.

00:44:01And on top of that,
there's something that
builds up, over time
there's a spot you reach where
all your machines start to sing.

00:44:10A spot where... you're in phase
with the way the machine wants to sound,
the way its designer
wanted it to sound...

00:44:21And when everything is aligned,
it sounds just great.

00:44:24Let's listen to the difference with
everyone's bleeding
into the new cello mic.

00:45:45I'm feeling much better now...

00:45:48Wonderful!
Very nice.

00:45:53My eyes don't hurt anymore.

00:45:59Well, it's still a mess...
But...

00:46:03but now I know that the drums' bleed
in the cello's mic
is not going to ruin my life tomorrow.

00:46:10I'm not gonna be very happy...

00:46:13but the cello sounds much better like this, right?
And the drums' bleed
sounds much better.

00:46:19So, we started out with
that mic there.

00:46:22Speaking of which...
how does the bass drum sound?
Because the cello's mic is now
on the bass drum... let's not forget!
Nice.

00:46:41Funnily enough,
even though it has a bigger diaphragm,
it doesn't go boom as much.
Strange, right?
Goes to show...

00:46:53It's acceptable, it has potential.

00:47:20Let's swap...

00:47:22because all of the shhh, tsss ...
That's gonna be bad for my health tomorrow.

00:47:29So let's try, there's no harm in trying.

00:47:38This exercise is meant to show you that
we expect certain things
and that our reasoning is based on
1) How much the mic cost us.

00:47:482) What we read on Gearslutz.

00:47:523) What the mic looks like...
Essential.

00:47:55These 3 parameters, you'll have to admit,
are totally irrelevant for an audio recording.

00:48:00The idea, actually,
is to remain curious,
and to try things out.

00:48:05Because initially, and especially
when you have musicians of this caliber
who are...
I don't know if you noticed, but
1) They don't joke around.

00:48:132) They're patient, because they
know that at the end of the day
it's going to help them
make a better record.

00:48:20And we have to put ourselves in a situation,
as engineers and producers,
where we have the choice and
the opportunity to do that.

00:48:27Or else we have records that sound small,
that are out of phase, that...

00:48:30that we're never happy with and
before you play the song to your friends,
you start making excuses...
"Yeah it's not mixed..." "It's not masterized..."
"Ehm, you know, the bass drum...
we actually borrowed it..."
No!
Let's try to elevate the debate
and do it so that we can press play
without having to read out the
Declaration of Independence
before we play the tunes
we recorded yesterday.

00:48:56It takes time... It's annoying...

00:48:59It's really something...

00:49:01Like, you move the mic around...

00:49:03and the third time round, you
don't know what you're doing anymore.

00:49:05That's normal.
But at least we tried.

00:49:07I found that on his vocals,
this mic didn't work out well.

00:49:12So, let's change it!
Let's try this.

00:49:24Let's try this.

00:50:05Will was moving a lot, did you notice?
Let's hear how it went...

00:50:22Listen to the shhh and sss.

00:50:24We're gonna play the previous playlist
and compare both mics.

00:50:40We're facing a choice here.

00:50:42Sure, it's dark.

00:50:45But I can fix it easily.

00:50:48A bit of EQ here,
a bit of saturation there...

00:50:51For the big shSss, it would take
me hours to fix that with a de-esser.

00:50:56Because I hate it when we can hear
that I'm doing something to the music,
and compressing etc ... I find it awful, especially for this kind of music. It's not dubstep!
So I think that it's a big change,
especially if Will is careful
not to do the Stevie Wonder thing.

00:51:14Can we hear the bass drum again please?
Just the bass drum
to be sure... since we
did a straight swap...

00:51:24Even better! Magnificent...

00:51:31Great.

00:51:33For rhythm purposes,
and so that everyone plays together,
I'd like to send a cue mix
to Thomas's headphones.

00:51:42And so, we selected all the tracks
and we're going to insert
the physical output 15-16
on one of Pro Tools' outputs. You'll
notice that it created an Aux on all tracks.

00:51:58We're now going to copy the mix
we have at the bottom
and we're going to send it to him.

00:52:05His headphones are
plugged into output 15-16.

00:52:07In Pro Tools, you can select all tracks,
and do "Automation", "Copy to Send".

00:52:18There we go, the mix is entirely
copied directly onto the Aux.

00:52:22We're gonna put it in pre,
so we can carry on doing our own mix.

00:52:29We're gonna do a Master on output 15-16,
in order to change the sound
and give Thomas the volume he wants.

00:52:46So, we are using an AAX plug-in,
since it's a new HDX system
The good thing about it is that
we can use it in real-time.

00:52:54Why am I putting a high pass?
Because as a general rule,
when drummers have their headphones on,
if the bass drum comes back
into their headphones out of phase,
They will hit it too hard
since they hear themselves less.

00:53:07If we put a high pass on the cue mix,
it's not as big an issue anymore.

00:53:12They hear the bass drum in real-time
and play rather well.

00:53:17We're going to add a limiter as well.
So he won't split his ears if he hits hard.

00:53:21The great thing about working with
plug-ins in real-time,
is that we have mics
going into the interface,
we go through Pro Tools, through the Send,
through the Master, through the plug-in
we come out through the interface, into the amp,
into his headphone -- all in real-time. No latency!
It's really convenient.

00:53:42I can't quite imagine
working without that.

00:53:46Let's face it. Unless you
have a huge console.

00:53:48But I didn't get one this time.

00:53:50That's one of the greatest
things about working
with a system with onboard DSPs
such as the new Pro Tools.

00:53:57Can you check?
Just play and see
if it splits your ears...

00:54:02Is it ok?
Before we record the song,
do you have any questions?
Yes, sir?
The question is: I swapped the bass drum
and the cello,
I had a small-diaphragm condenser mic
on the bass drum, which we liked,
but the 715,
that I thought was gonna be good on the cello
turned out to be nonsense.

00:54:49So I took the 715,
I stuck it onto the bass drum,
and put a C700 on the cello.

00:54:55So the C42 ended up
punished, in time-out.

00:55:00And then in the end,
the 715 on the bass drum
didn't go as low
as the small mic...

00:55:11I should have put the small mic back,
but I don't know why, I thought,
as I listened to the vocals again
I found them a bit aggressive.
So I thought, why not try something else...

00:55:20I took the 715, put it on the voice
which is a bit darker -- but that's a
good thing for us.

00:55:25I put the 716 on the bass drum
and it sounded great.

00:55:30Any other question?
Great question! Why didn't I put the small mic
back on the bass drum,
as it would give me more options?
Because I don't want more options.

00:55:48The problem of our time
...that's where it gets philosophical,
we're going to have to drink red wine
and try to solve the world's problems...

00:55:54I'm tired of having lots of options.

00:55:56When I receive a track
with 27 drum mics,
I use 4 of them...
Just for the sake of it -- in protest.

00:56:04Let's stop putting 14 mics
on everything...

00:56:07I'm a bit guilty here...

00:56:10But I could feel a big
problem coming on.

00:56:14Do you mind the bass drum's sound?
That one sounds good, right?
So, let's go for it!
Or else, tomorrow...

00:56:22I'm going to listen to the first one...
Then the second one...

00:56:24Maybe there's a phase
difference between them?
Maybe I'm not gonna
like it with the overheads?
Maybe I'm gonna spend
half an hour on it...

00:56:31And we don't have half an hour,
we're making a song.

00:56:33And the best way to make a song
is to do it comfortably, but fast...

00:56:37so we can do another one the next day,
and another one the day after.

00:56:39The more songs we do,
the better we feel.

00:56:41Spending a week on the snare sound,
as they did in the 80's,
...there are many things they used to do in the 80's
that I'd love to do, but that's not one of them!
The angle I use for the mics?
Does it point to where
the sound is the loudest
or the most pleasant?
Does it disturb the musician?
Am I doing something good enough
to control the mics' bleeds?
It's a mix of all 3!
Cardioid mics are convenient, because
there's plenty of rejection behind them.

00:57:17But as we saw earlier on,
in such conditions...

00:57:23Regarding the vocal...
if we only did vocals
without him playing the guitar,
I'd probably put it a little further away
and I may put it at an angle to prevent him
from singing directly into the capsule,
to avoid pops and esses.

00:57:35But if I do that, I'm gonna get
even more bleed from the drums.

00:57:38It will be impossible to mix tomorrow.

00:57:41Let's record this beautiful song
from start to finish
because I'm tired of hearing
the same verse over and over.

01:00:22Will Knox!
See you tomorrow at 3pm for the mix!

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Fab Dupont is a Grammy winning NYC based record producer, mixing/mastering engineer and co-founder of pureMix.net.

Fab has been playing, writing, producing and mixing music both live and in studios all over the world. He's worked in cities like Paris, Boston, Brussels, Stockholm, London and New York just to name a few.

He has his own studio called FLUX Studios in the East Village of New York City.

Fab has been nominated for Grammys 6 times, including two Latin Grammys and has received many other accolades around the world, including Victoires de la Musique, South African Music awards, Pan African Music Awards and US independent music awards.